For me the most exceptional games they distributed were Planescape: Torment, Soulbringer and Tides of Numenera. If you look at the covers of each game the artwork is gorgeous and awesome. Truly. But for prospective gamers who just glance on the picture and know nothing of the game the first impression is unfortunately violence and horror. Even the title features Torment. You are not reaching the game's core audience, people who are sensible and care about depth.

It's a bit like trying to sell an outstanding vegan product in a packaging that shows raw meat. No one will buy this.

Rebrand and create a bookstore edition as I suggested earlier. I mean this seriously. The costs are small, the potential rewards huge. Get it to the 75th World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon).

I may be in the minority here, but I'm not sure there's much inXile can do at this point to boost sales. The game is what it is, the self-inflicted stretch-goal missteps are what they are, and the impaired dev-fan communication regarding those missteps was what it was. I would also say the decision to have essentially no combat, coupled with the very cumbersome turn-based system that turned what few combats there were into nightmarish reruns of Fallout's rat melees, turned off Diablo and "bookstore" CRPGers alike without attracting much of the strategy/wargaming crowd who would supposedly flock to the game if only RTwP were abandoned. I also think TToN ultimately failed to resolve its stated question of why one life matters, in stark contrast to PST which revolved throughout around the question of what can change the nature of a man.

I enjoyed TToN and think there's some chance it will gradually find its audience over time. But just as past near-greats have suffered from poorly handled dev-fan communication (Siege of Dragonspear), combat systems that many people found cumbersome (Temple of Elemental Evil), and an ultimately unsatisfying endgame (Ultima 8), the issues that have thus far prevented TToN from achieving BG or even PST heights go beyond just finding the right way to market the game.

Last edited by jsaving on July 7th, 2017, 6:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Rebrand and create a bookstore edition as I suggested earlier. I mean this seriously. The costs are small, the potential rewards huge. Get it to the 75th World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon).

I’m still thinking this is a great idea.
That’s the kind of precedent I would love to see.

Yes, this sounds very good indeed.
In general, speeking about books, it would be very cool BTW if InXile would be so kind to do another Artbook, but this time a serious, well-done one. The CE-Artbook is nothing in comparision to an awesome artbook like the one from Witcher II which combines Art and Lore in a very athmospheric game. They should practise the art of doing artbooks anyways for their upcoming titles, so it would be a good thing to start right now.

I find it strange how Torment has a much lower completion rate on Steam than its most recent competitor, Tyranny. 14.3% of owners have finished Torment, while roughly 20% have finished Tyranny. At first I thought it was because Torment was the longer game, but that doesn't seem to be the case based on people's playing times.

It seems that players are spending a lot less time in Torment, and are less likely to complete the game than Tyranny.

At the start, Torment and Tyranny are roughly on par. 80% of Torment's owners have started up the game at least once, compared to 90% of Tyranny's owners. 64% of Torment owners have entered Sagus Cliffs (16% quit before), while 68% of Tyranny owners have acquired a reputation ability from a companion or faction (22% quit before). Both of these things happen at roughly the same time in a playthrough.

However, a large number of players seem to be quitting Torment in the early stages of the main quest: only 30% of Torment owners have completed the Matkina text adventure. That compares to 54% of Tyranny owners who have beaten Act I and 28% who have beaten Act II.

Once people have met Matkina, the numbers hold pretty steady again: 28% leave the city, 24% reach Miel Avest, 21% reach the Bloom, and 17% get close to the endgame.

In summary: the typical Torment player stops in early Sagus Cliffs or the tutorial, having played less than 7 hours. The typical Tyranny player stops at some point before the end of Act II, having played less than 14 hours.

I would be interested to know what conclusions inXile is drawing from this type of player behavior. Perhaps we'll eventually get a post mortem from the developers?

Since Torment is now being given away for free to anyone who buys Mage's Tale (https://twitter.com/BrianFargo/status/9 ... 0707276800), Steamspy numbers might soon become inaccurate. Or maybe the number of people who buy MT during this offer will be so small that it won't matter at all.

Either way, the last recorded Steamspy owner number before the bundle sale was 146,260.

I find it strange how Torment has a much lower completion rate on Steam than its most recent competitor, Tyranny.

Honestly, and as much as I like TTON, I don't find that surprising at all. TTON is a much more text-focused game, much less action-oriented, and that's not what the average Steam gamer is looking for. It was known from the beginning that TTON would be more of a "niche" and much less mainstream than WL2, POE, D:OS or Tyranny, to name just a few of the "RPG renaissance". The same way that while Planescape: Torment fans love the game very much, PST didn't have as much commercial success nor the widespread, mainstream status of Baldurs' Gate.

It's sad for me, because I personally prefer the story-focus, text-heavy, deliciously weird games like PST or TTON, but it's not surprising nor unexpected. I'm aware my own preferences are a minority opinion.

Low-combat games do have a tougher time finding their niche, but TToN's surprisingly tedious turn-based combat system turned what few battles there were into cumbersome chores rather than the highlights they were obviously intended to be. A lot of backers claimed such a system would attract ToEE-type strategy/wargame players without repelling adventure gamers, but unfortunately it appears to have instead repelled adventure gamers without attracting nearly enough strategy/wargamers to make up the difference. You can actually make a decent argument that TToN would have sold a bit better with fewer crises rather than more, though a much better solution would have been to opt for a less tedious combat system like IE's real time with pause or even Diablo's real time without pause.

You can actually make a decent argument that TToN would have sold a bit better with fewer crises rather than more, though a much better solution would have been to opt for a less tedious combat system like IE's real time with pause or even Diablo's real time without pause.

Not quite so easy... conversations are part of crisis tactics.

The stichtus battle was tediously slow and one of the first (if not first) crisis that a player will have. This "battle" could indeed have turned players off - would explain why players never made it to Matkina. Having a fast animation mode would probably fix this issue.

a much better solution would have been to opt for a less tedious combat system like IE's real time with pause or even Diablo's real time without pause.

That's highly subjective, I personally find RtwP more tedious than turn-based, as for without pause... it would have been a complete disaster, and ruined the game spirit completely. Crisis aren't just about fighting, but also interacting with environment, negotiating with characters, ... and that part was great and would have been totally lost.

a much better solution would have been to opt for a less tedious combat system like IE's real time with pause or even Diablo's real time without pause.

That's highly subjective, I personally find RtwP more tedious than turn-based, as for without pause... it would have been a complete disaster, and ruined the game spirit completely. Crisis aren't just about fighting, but also interacting with environment, negotiating with characters, ... and that part was great and would have been totally lost.

I agree on the praise for the crisis concept...
...but wait, at least in theory this could have been implemented into a RtwP-System as well. I don´t see anything which would hinder a dev to give you interaction points with chars and environment in RtwP-Systems.

But all these discussions about RtwP have a very much theoretical approach in general. I mean, which of the big C-RPGs with RtwP actually got good combat systems in the end?

The InfinityEngine games didn´t, the AuroraEngine-Games didn´t, the NebulaEngine-Games didn´t, the EternityEngine-Games didn´t.
Quite a devestating list, isn´t?

Well, but leaving RtwP byside T:TON didn´t have a good combat system as well. It might just turn out that creating a good combat system for C-RPGs even without the stuff that T:TON wanted is super-hard. Personally, I don´t even remember a single system that deserves the verdict good. Do you or somebody else around?

I've enjoyed RPGs with all types of combat systems and would certainly agree that none of them were perfect. That said, IE's RTwP combat system was broadly acceptable to most RPGers as evidenced by the sales figures for IE games. Dropping that system shouldn't be taken lightly, especially when half your backers are telling you in real time that you're making a mistake by so doing. And if you drop it anyway, then the onus is on you to deliver something better, which I don't think happened in this case.

I certainly agree that no combat system is perfect, but IE's RTwP combat system was broadly acceptable to most RPGers as evidenced by the sales figures for IE games. Dropping that system shouldn't be taken lightly, especially when half your backers are telling you in real time that you're making a mistake by so doing. And if you drop it anyway, then the onus is on you to deliver something better, which I don't think happened in this case.

Well, sales can be given for almost everything, that´s a ton of interpretation what´s flowing in such statement. Just think about some of the EternalEarlyAccessTitles...
...with their sales and their quality, you could construct so many strange arguments, you could write a book about it.

...I belive that IE-System and an implementation of the T:TON-strenghts on top of it would have worked out quite well, but I´m not sure whether InXile could have delivered this or not. I might be biased against IE-System due to EnhancedEditions. Despite the most recent one for PS:T, none of them could let the System shine, as none exept PS:T EE are shiny in general.

I agree on the praise for the crisis concept...
...but wait, at least in theory this could have been implemented into a RtwP-System as well. I don´t see anything which would hinder a dev to give you interaction points with chars and environment in RtwP-Systems.

I was referring to a Diablo-like real-time without pause system. In such a case sure you can have interactable points in the game (Diablo has shrines, ...) but it would totally untractable to do Crisis that way.

For RtwP it would have been possible, but harder, and make the game more cumbersome.

But all these discussions about RtwP have a very much theoretical approach in general. I mean, which of the big C-RPGs with RtwP actually got good combat systems in the end?

The InfinityEngine games didn´t, the AuroraEngine-Games didn´t, the NebulaEngine-Games didn´t, the EternityEngine-Games didn´t.
Quite a devestating list, isn´t?

I would say IE games and PoE combat system is fine at low-level, when the number of available options is low, but gets very hard and cumbersome to manage at higher levels when number of available spells/items/special abilities/... increases.

I find it strange how Torment has a much lower completion rate on Steam than its most recent competitor, Tyranny. 14.3% of owners have finished Torment, while roughly 20% have finished Tyranny. At first I thought it was because Torment was the longer game, but that doesn't seem to be the case based on people's playing times.

Isn't Tyranny a much shorter game? That combined with the higher play-time would obviously make the completion rate of Tyranny better than Torment. I'm a bit surprised at the difference; I would have expected much higher completion rates for Tyranny. Though that's still around 50000 people completing Tyranny compared to around 20000 people completing Torment. Both numbers are depressing.

i finished Tyranny in 23hours.
For Torment it took me 50 hours.
I only played both once and tried to do as much as i can in that one playthrough.
So, yes, Tyranny is much shorter than Torment.
Although both are designed to play them more than once, i think its safe to say that Tyranny is the shorter one.

The "All Styles" stat is the average completion time of all players who submitted their playing times (63 people for Torment, 93 for Tyranny). The difference is negligible. People will have different experiences based on reading speed, preferred combat difficulty (can't turn Torment to "Story Mode" if you want to blitz through it), attitude toward backer content (no backer stuff in Tyranny, lots and lots of tombs to go through in Torment), etc., but on average it's nearly identical.